


Holding a Hand and Other Stories

by toyhto



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M, Ratings may vary, Stand-Alones, Tumblr fics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 06:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30034251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: A collection of short fics I've posted on Tumblr.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	1. Holding a Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I have now written two (2) small Johnlock stories for tumblr so it's officially time for a collection on AO3. I'll update the rating if I end up writing Mature or Explicit stuff later. These are stand-alone stories. You can also find me on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com).
> 
> The first one is Pre-Reichenbach. John comes home from work and Sherlock is holding a hand.

HOLDING A HAND  
  
  
John Watson liked to think that he wasn’t an idiot. He had his weaknesses, like everyone else, but generally speaking, he wasn’t stupid. He knew what was going on in his life, and what was going on in his life was that he had a perfectly acceptable job, a messy but otherwise nice flat, and a flatmate with whom he got on pretty well. They were friends. They were best friends, actually. Sherlock Holmes was the strangest man John had ever known but also the best, and everything was good. Whenever someone glanced at John with the certain look, the one that said _‘why aren’t you married’_ or _‘don’t you want kids’_ or ‘ _why are you living with an adult man who doesn’t know how to use a dishwasher but instead once poured two litres of human blood in the bathtub during a heatwave’,_ John was able to smile politely and remember that he was fine. He knew who he was. Life was good.  
  
Then one day he came home from the clinic and found Sherlock in the kitchen, holding a hand.  
  
“Where did you get that?” he asked, realising vaguely that he didn’t sound like a man who knew what was going on in his life.  
  
“What?” Sherlock asked, looking up from the hand and fixing his eyes on John. Then he blinked and glanced at the hand again. “Oh, hello, John.”  
  
“Sherlock,” John said, gritting his teeth. This was insane. His life was absolutely fucking insane. He was just an ex-soldier and a doctor who had a job and a flat and a flatmate, and he couldn’t understand why the hell he had to deal with shit like this every other day. He took a very deep breath which didn’t help at all. “That’s a hand,” he said.  
  
Sherlock frowned at him. “Yes, John, it’s a hand.”  
  
“On our table.”  
  
“…where did you want me to put it?”  
  
“Nowhere,” John said, staring at the hand. He took off his coat, breathed out and told himself that this wasn’t particularly more insane than most of the things Sherlock did. He could walk to the kitchen, ignore both Sherlock and the hand, and put the kettle on. He could do it. He could…  
  
He glanced at Sherlock again. Sherlock was frowning at the hand.  
  
“Why are you holding it?” John asked.  
  
Sherlock opened his mouth, blinked at John and closed his mouth again. Then he slowly withdrew his fingers from where they had been entangled with the hand’s.  
  
“I’ll make us tea,” John said quickly and walked past Sherlock. So, Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table, holding hands with a… hand. It wasn’t illegal. Sherlock wasn’t hurting anyone, not even John, even though John’s brain was kind of hurting. Everything was fine. John would make tea and they would drink it and maybe put the hand into the freezer or wherever Sherlock was planning to store it. And then they would talk about other things. He could ask Sherlock if anyone had been murdered lately. That would distract Sherlock for a moment.  
  
“We’re out of honey,” Sherlock said, when John was staring at the kettle, waiting for the water to boil. “I ate it all.”  
  
John swallowed. Honey. They needed to buy honey. He needed to buy honey. Sherlock had eaten the whole jar. Of honey. A hand on the table. A dead hand on the table, and Sherlock’s hand holding it… “Sherlock?”  
  
“Yes, I know its nutritional value is minimal,” Sherlock said and sighed loudly. “But really, I’ll be fine. You’re making tea.”  
  
“I meant the hand,” John said and glanced over his shoulder. The hand was still on the table, but at least Sherlock wasn’t touching it.  
  
“Oh,” Sherlock said, then looked away from him. “ _Oh._ Molly gave it to me. I didn’t kill anyone. I thought you didn’t –“  
  
“Yeah, I realised Molly gave it to you,” John said quickly. “I didn’t think you killed anyone, Sherlock, I _know_ you wouldn’t, we are… I know you, Sherlock. I just meant –“  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” Sherlock cut in, “you want to know more. Very well. A thirty-eight year old male, manual labour, kept his fingers trimmed neatly, had cats, probably had an affair with the receptionist –“  
  
“Please, stop,” John said and then got even more worried, when Sherlock actually stopped talking. “I don’t want to know about _him_ ,” John said, because it seemed that Sherlock was waiting for him to keep talking, which didn’t happen often and only made the whole situation more absurd. “I want to know about _you_.”  
  
“Me?” Sherlock asked, staring at John as if John was the one who had just got caught holding a dead hand.  
  
John swallowed. “Yeah, I just…”  
  
“Yes?” Sherlock asked, shifting on the chair so that he was facing John now. It was intimidating, to be the whole focus of Sherlock Holmes’ gaze.  
  
John pulled his shoulders back and stood straight. “You were holding hands with it.”  
  
Sherlock blinked.  
  
“With a dead hand,” John said, “at our kitchen table.”  
  
Sherlock breathed out. “Where would you –“  
  
“I don’t want you to hold hands with it anywhere,” John said and then realised that had come out a bit wrong. “Well, of course you _can_ … I mean, if you want to hold a dead hand, I certainly can’t… It’s not my business, that’s what I mean. You can touch anything you want. Even if it’s dead. You can… okay, I’m not going to imagine what else you could do with it. I just… just…”  
  
“…yes?”  
  
Okay, so, John didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on anymore. “You were holding hands with a _hand._ ”  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes and sighed loudly, maybe even a bit too loudly. John had been suspecting for a while now that maybe Sherlock was quite talented at acting. That was the only possible explanation for quite a few things that went on in 221B. “Oh, sod off. It’s not so weird.”  
  
“It’s the weirdest thing you’ve done this whole week,” John said. “And I’m used to you bringing parts of dead people into our home. But this was different. This was… you were… you were _holding it._ ”  
  
“John, you’re repeating yourself even more than usually,” Sherlock said and stood up suddenly. The hand was still on the kitchen table and John was staring at it. He didn’t seem to be able to stop. “I have things to do in my bedroom,” Sherlock said. “You can bring my tea there when it’s ready.”  
  
“Are you lonely or something?” John asked. His voice sounded all wrong. His life was absolutely mad and he had no idea what he and Sherlock were, and besides, the kettle was boiling.  
  
Sherlock stopped.  
  
“Sorry,” John said. “Sorry, that was… a bit rude, probably. But… are you?”  
  
“The kettle is boiling,” Sherlock said in a steady voice. It was the same voice he often used to avoid John’s questions about the chemicals spilled on the carpet.  
  
“Sherlock,” John said. He sounded scared. Sherlock would eat him alive, pour something toxic on the carpet and then retreat into his bedroom and stay there until tomorrow. He would have to put the hand into the freezer, which wasn’t ideal, because he didn’t want to touch it. Also, he didn’t want to think about how it had had Sherlock’s hand holding it. If the person to whom the hand had belonged would have still been alive, he would have known now what it felt like to hold hands with Sherlock Holmes.  
  
Oh, god, what an absurd thought. John had supposed Sherlock never held hands with anyone. Not that he had been thinking about Sherlock holding hands with people, he just… he had just thought that Sherlock wasn’t. Hadn’t. Wouldn’t. Holding hands was what ordinary people did. John was ordinary, Sherlock wasn’t. That was how the things were. That was John’s life. John knew it. John knew some things. He wasn’t stupid.  
  
“Maybe I should’ve used latex gloves,” Sherlock said in a quiet voice.  
  
John closed his eyes for a second. The tea. He was making tea. Tea would fix this. He picked two mugs from the cupboard and poured water in them. Sherlock was still standing in the kitchen doorway, which didn’t make sense at all, because Sherlock clearly didn’t want to talk about the hand and Sherlock never did anything just to please John, only he did, actually, all the time. Sometimes the things he did were so small John barely noticed then, like a few nights ago, when John had been watching the television and his toes had been freezing and he had only realised that when Sherlock had thrown a pair of wool socks into his lap.  
  
“John?”  
  
 _Oh_. Right. He should say something. “Here’s your tea,” he said and gave a cup to Sherlock.  
  
“Thank you,” Sherlock said. His fingers brushed against John’s as he took the cup. He had warm fingers. Humans usually did. When they were alive. The hand on the table definitely hadn’t had warm fingers, not like John would, if Sherlock held his hand. “I’m not lonely,” Sherlock said, and John almost dropped his cup of tea.  
  
“I shouldn’t have asked that,” John said. “I really shouldn’t have. That was… that’s not my…” He took a deep breath. “You aren’t?”  
  
“No,” Sherlock said, his eyes fixed on John as if he was looking for clues. “Not recently. You are here almost all the time, except when you are at work or in a pub with some of your old friends, and I can handle that. Actually, I prefer it that I have some time alone sometimes. Your company is sometimes distracting.”  
  
John cleared his throat. “Distracting –“  
  
“Not in a negative way,” Sherlock added. “I like it that you are here. You have some remarkable features and some that are… surprisingly not annoying. So, I’m not lonely. It would be absurd to be lonely when I regularly spend considerable amounts of time in your company.”  
  
John put his cup of tea on the counter, because his hand had started shaking. “Sherlock –“  
  
“I’m not lonely,” Sherlock said, looking him in the eyes now, “I am not, I was just… I was curious. I saw it on the television. And Molly gave me the hand. Its previous owner didn’t need it anymore.”  
  
“You saw it on the television,” John said in a thin voice.  
  
“I realise now that it might have been an odd thing to do,” Sherlock said, “since the custom is generally thought to involve two people who are both alive. However, I didn’t have that option, and instead I had a hand that Molly had given me, so –“  
  
“So you held hands with it.” _Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god._ John couldn’t believe Sherlock was still there, talking to him about this. Almost like this was important. “You saw that on the television, then? People holding hands?”  
  
“Yes,” Sherlock said. It sounded like a dare. _I dare you to tell me I’m weird._  
  
“You saw people holding hands on the television and wanted to try it.”  
  
“…yes,” Sherlock said, his eyes on John.  
  
John breathed in. He didn’t know what was happening in his life and he didn’t know what was happening in the kitchen right now and he certainly didn’t know what was happening with his heart, only that he hoped it wasn’t a heart attack. But he knew he wasn’t a coward.  
  
“You could’ve just asked me,” he said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
John Watson liked to think that he wasn’t an idiot, but actually, he was. It had turned out recently that he had had a crush on his flatmate pretty much since the day one and he had only realised that when he had found the said flatmate in their kitchen, holding hands with somebody’s removed limb.  
  
Another thing that had taken him a while to realise was that he was actually a little bit gay. Not that they had done much about it yet, Sherlock and him, but there had been a few conversations that had seemed a bit gay, and some kissing that had definitely been gay, and also John was thinking about all the gay things he wanted to do with Sherlock, to Sherlock, on Sherlock and in Sherlock. He had made a list, but Sherlock had found the list and then had nicked John’s laptop for ‘research’ as he called it. It had been quite loud and clearly explicit, and John had tried to keep drinking his tea but had in fact freaked out a little, because he didn’t know anything about being gay, only that he wanted to do it with Sherlock.  
  
They had also taken the loose hand back to Molly.  
  
So, everything was fine. Everything was more than fine, really. John had a new boyfriend, or… John had Sherlock, which was absolutely fucking perfect and terrifying and everything John had never realised he hoped for. John was happy.  
  
Then one day he came home from the clinic and found Sherlock in the kitchen, holding a penis.


	2. Just a Coat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-Reichenbach, pre-slash.

JUST A COAT  
  
  
It was right there. And it was just a coat.  
  
John sat down in his armchair and sipped his tea. So, apparently Sherlock had gone out without his coat. That was perfectly understandable. It was a warm day. Maybe Sherlock had noticed they were running out of milk and had gone to the corner shop to – oh, god, _that_ was ridiculous. But the fact remained that when John himself had come home from the clinic ten minutes ago, Sherlock had been nowhere to be seen and the flat had been completely quiet. And still, the coat was hanging there by the door. John had glanced at it, gone to the toilet, glanced at the coat again – still there – changed his clothes, made himself tea throwing glances at the coat, and now he was drinking the and staring at the coat.  
  
It was just an ordinary coat. Well, maybe not exactly _ordinary_ , because John was sure it had cost a fucking fortune. But it was just a coat. If John had seen a coat like that on anyone else, he wouldn’t have thought about it twice. Sure, it was long and mysterious, but many coats were long and mysterious. There was absolutely no reason why that one coat should have been special.  
  
John leaned against the back of the armchair, staring at the coat. The only thing that made it special was that it was Sherlock’s, of course. Everything about Sherlock was special in the most infuriating way. Not that John didn’t like that. Obviously he did. Why else would he have lived with Sherlock for almost one and a half years now with only mild complaining about body parts in the fridge? No, yeah, John liked it. He liked Sherlock, and he also liked the coat.

  
Sometimes Sherlock had the coat on when he was in the flat and not even planning to go anywhere. If John asked him if he was cold, he said no. John had never asked him why the fuck he was wearing the coat then. Maybe John didn’t want to know. Or maybe he liked to think that Sherlock was doing it for _him_ , just so he could watch Sherlock looking mysterious like a modern vampire while sitting in their living room and talking to John about tobacco ashes.  
  
Once, John had come home and found Sherlock wearing the coat and nothing else. Sherlock had thrown one look at John and then frowned so furiously John had been afraid of the damage that might do to Sherlock’s face. Sherlock had said that he hadn’t expected John home so early, and John had said it had been a quiet day in the clinic. Then he had retreated into his bedroom upstairs, and when he had come back to the living room, Sherlock had been wearing clothes again. John didn’t think about that day much, but when he did, he wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t gone upstairs and instead, he would have sat down on the sofa next to Sherlock.  
  
John took a deep breath and put his cup of tea on the side table. He wasn’t going to touch Sherlock’s coat. That would have been weird. John wasn’t a weird man, no, he was an ordinary man with a lot of somewhat unordinary issues, like a flatmate who thought chemical hazard was ‘fun’. John was perfectly ordinary. He didn’t even like clothes, especially not fancy clothes, and especially not someone else’s fancy clothes. Besides, Sherlock would know. Sherlock would somehow find out that John had touched the fabric just to see what it would feel like against his fingers. Sherlock would probably think it was another example of John being an idiot. But then again, Sherlock already thought John was an idiot, so John didn’t have a lot to lose. And sometimes, and only privately, he liked to think that he was Sherlock’s favourite idiot.  
  
He stood up, walked to the door and then stood there for a moment, looking at the coat. It really was just a coat. And there was no way he could _break_ it, was there?  
  
He raised his hand and touched the sleeve.  
  
It felt like fabric.  
  
Well, that was disappointing. He breathed in, refused to laugh at himself even though he _was_ being an idiot, and took a step away from the coat. Then he stopped. Really, it was just fabric, just Sherlock’s coat, and Sherlock was out, and besides, Sherlock had used John’s toothbrush for a scientific experiment _twice._ Surely this didn’t even begin to compare.  
  
The coat was heavy to hold. John pushed his left arm into a sleeve, and then the right arm, and then he breathed deeply. The coat was far too long for him, almost touching the floor, which was bad, because John couldn’t remember the last time when they had vacuumed the flat. He touched the front of the coat, fiddled with the buttons, lifted up the collar, brushed the fabric with his knuckles, and then pushed his both hands into the pockets.  
  
Oh, god, he had his hands in Sherlock’s pockets. He was wearing Sherlock’s coat and he had his hands in Sherlock’s pockets, which was where Sherlock kept his hands, sometimes. There was something in the left pocket… a handkerchief, which was gross, but then again, it was Sherlock’s handkerchief, and John had built very high tolerance for Sherlock’s gross things. Maybe that was because they were living together. It was almost as if they were in a very weird relationship, in which John nagged at Sherlock for not cleaning the kitchen and also didn’t mind touching Sherlock’s handkerchiefs.  
  
“John?”  
  
John pulled his hands out of the pockets. Oh, _shit shit shit shit_ -  
  
“What’re you doing?” Sherlock asked, looking at John from where he was standing at his bedroom door. He was wearing pyjama pants and a white t-shirt, and his hair was a mess.  
  
“Nothing,” John said and cleared his throat. “Absolutely nothing. I was just… handkerchiefs!”  
  
“There’s a pack on the sofa table,” Sherlock said and nodded at the sofa table. “I’m terribly afraid that the one in my pocket has been used a couple of times, so you might not want to use it.”  
  
“Yeah,” John said, trying and failing to sound normal. “Yeah, of course. I wasn’t going to… I didn’t notice that.”  
  
Sherlock tilted his head to the side, watching John. “John?”  
  
“Sorry,” John said, looking away from Sherlock. He started taking off the coat and his arm got stuck in the sleeve. “ _Shit._ I’m just… I’m going to… sorry.”  
  
“Maybe you should have checked if I’m in the flat before you started trying on my clothes,” Sherlock said. He sounded like he was smiling, but John absolutely couldn’t look at his face right now.  
  
“No,” John said, “no, I wasn’t… I wasn’t trying your clothes on.”  
  
“Well, I’m glad you started with the coat,” Sherlock said, “because if I had come out of my room and found you, I don’t know, wearing my shirt, I might have been a bit more confused.”  
  
John cleared his throat. “I would never –“  
  
“You absolutely should,” Sherlock said. “You should try one of my shirts, only the size is wrong for you, so sadly you wouldn’t get the whole experience of wearing a proper shirt.”  
  
“I have proper shirts,” John said. He didn’t. Also, he didn’t seem to manage to get rid of the coat. He was stuck in both sleeves and also _knew_ that his goddamn face was bright pink now.  
  
“John,” Sherlock said and walked to him, “John, stop struggling, you’re going to hurt yourself.”  
  
John wanted to tell Sherlock to piss off but he definitely couldn’t, not now when he was still wearing Sherlock’s coat.  
  
“I’ll help,” Sherlock said, grabbed the left sleeve and helped John to get his arm free. “Here you go. Let me take that –“  
  
Sherlock took the coat, and John took a deep breath. Oh, god. Oh, god, how stupid he was. He felt like… like Sherlock had caught him listening through the door for sex noises. Which was a stupid thing to feel like, by the way. He had just tried on Sherlock’s coat. And _Sherlock_ was the one who listened through the door while John was wanking and then made vague comments afterwards. It was irritating and weird and made John wonder what the hell was wrong with his life, but also it made wanking so, so, _so_ good.  
  
“Sorry again,” John said, trying to pull himself together.  
  
“No reason to apologise,” Sherlock said and hung the coat. “Can you make me tea?”  
  
John opened his mouth to tell Sherlock that he could make his own tea, and then thought again. “Sure. Now?”  
  
“Yes, please,” Sherlock said, walked to the sofa and sat down. “Make yourself a cup, too.”  
  
John walked to the kitchen and then glanced over his shoulder. Sherlock was watching him. “…why? You want company?”  
  
“Sort of,” Sherlock said. “I’m going to deduce why you wanted to try my coat on."


End file.
